easter brunch: last ditch before wedding diet

Please accept my apologies at how much over-due this post is... I've been running around with my head cut off, working on wedding details!

For Easter Brunch, my sister declared that she really wanted a BRAID. This is traditionally something that my mother makes, but as they are currently in the midst of a divorce (did I just air my personal business on the internet?), it was just me, sister, fiance, and Dad there. So I took it upon myself to make this braid!

Here are some action shots...

Cutting up the Canadian Bacon


Cooking the eggs... It is one of my core cooking beliefs that ALL scrambled eggs are much better with a dollop of cream cheese cooked in with them. We used reduced fat cream cheese. Don't knock it 'till you rock it. I think you'll agree with me.


Next step: Laying out the sheet of dough. We used to get reduced fat crescent rolls and it was a pain b/c you'd have to smush it together to make sure the crescent parts didn't break off, but this time, we just got the sheet of dough. I'm spacing on the name, but it was totally worth it. I hope they come out with a reduced fat one soon.

Then I put the ham and the eggs in the center of the sheet, as shown in this photo.



I left out a photo step, but then I added cheese. Duh. Do I even make any recipes that don't have cheese in them?

As the photo above implies, then I cut about 1" strips on the outsides of the mass of food in the middle of the sheet. I think this photo illustrates it better than I could in words.
Also shown in this photo, then I took the dough handles, twisted them over the center, and rested them on the other side.

Baked on 350 for as long as it took for it to look like this, and it was ready! (40 minutes maybe?)


You may have noticed I do not have a recipe for this, but you can find a similar recipe here.

A pose from my father admist helping with the braid:


and for good measure, my favorite four-legged, bandana-wearing buddy, who is sad he's in a car and not outside chasing squirrels:



....and the wedding diet began the next morning. Can you believe I had seasoned green beans for dinner last night? hah! BRING IT ON!

bachelorette party!

Austin had his bachelor party the same weekend as I did.
My ladies and I stayed in a luxurious mountain house in Wintergreen, VA, and spent time at wine tastings and other fun drinking and bonding-related activities. Here are three photos, of our party bus, outside a winery, and at our self-declared dance party in the side room of the Devil's Backbone (a restaurant) at the base of Wintergreen mountain.

a homeowner's photodiary

These photos are from April 3, 2011...

Background story: Austin is outside mowing and edging the lawn, when I hear "Tempa, I think you need to come here... right now..." I thought he cut his finger off and was bleeding profusely. This is in fact what I found:






A rock had flown up and hit our storm door, shattering it to teeny pieces. It sounded like an ice storm as it spread throughout the door.



... It took lots of teamwork and discovering a $10 off coupon for Lowe's


...But 24 hours later we overcame our first homeowner hurdle,
and it became a Homeowner SUCCESS!!



Oh yeah, we also fixed our flag pole.

CROSSING THE FINISH LINE

This post is a few days overdue, but I've been sooo bussyy!

On Saturday, I ran the Monument Ave 10k with friend Laura and it was awesome! Here are some cell phone before pics:


I would say that Austin ran with us also, but he SMOKED us. The second he was able to, he ran ahead, and he did such a great job.

I opened my e-mail this morning to a message titled "Monument Ave 10k photos," and was wondering how I would find my pictures within the pics of the 40,000 people who ran (!). Come to find out, pictures OF MYSELF were in my e-mail. It was kind of creepy.

Here's a link to the entire set of photos/videos if you are so inclined.

Some mid-race official pics:


And our awesome race FINISHING picture! Next time, I will know these photos are coming and maybe do an actual pose.


My time was 65:09!!!

awesome message pillows!

A much needed work sanity break, finding cute things...

Let's Make Out pillows by alexandra ferguson



Relax pillow by HoneyPieDesign



great amy butler pillows by Ahmelie

one of those weeks

sad client things this week. had one person almost die due to relapse, and i was on the phone with another person trying to get them in touch with domestic violence resources, when their abuser came home early. i think i need to go home.

The invitations are mailed!

(What a hunk, eh? This was a mostly candid shot - he was not happy with me taking his picture in the USPS parking lot.)

Here is Austin with his parents' invitation:



And Austin putting in the final stack:


....now I just have to make sure the RSVP website is finished before anyone gets their invitation. Ah!